CARY – A local company is at the center of a massive multimillion-dollar modernization of a Web-based technology that’s critical to keeping the country’s freight railroads moving.

Cary-based Railinc plans in late August to unveil a new software that helps freight railroads keep track of their rolling stock. Umler, which originally was known as the Universal Machine Language Equipment Register, is essentially a giant spreadsheet that contains information on more than two million pieces of equipment, including 1.4 million rail cars and 25,000 locomotives. The database tracks each car’s type – such as flatcars or boxcars – its size and inspections on the cars, among other information.

It’s not sexy data, but it is essential – especially since Umler data can be fed into other types of programs, such as billing and maintenance software.

“Everybody in the freight railroad industry must use Umler,” says Allen West, president and chief executive officer of Railinc, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Association of American Railroads. Railinc is a for-profit company akin to a utility in that some – though not all – of its products are required to be used by the freight industry.

Railinc has spent $11 million over the past few years to develop the new Umler, which contains 800,000 lines of code.

West says Railinc expects to generate more than $5 million in annual revenue from the new Umler system. Railinc, which employs 150 full-time as well as 40 contractors, generates between $40 million and $45 million in annual revenue.

Randy Voith, a technical director for railroad company CSX, describes the Umler system as “a very big deal.” That’s underscored by Railinc’s estimates that the freight railroad industry will end up spending about $100 million to make sure the new version of Umler is compatible with the railroads’ existing internal technology systems.

The new software replaces a system whose underlying architecture was designed in the 1960s to be used with IBM punch cards. Railinc has been maintaining and updating that existing system for years.

While Umler doesn’t track the movement of rail equipment, it does make that movement possible. Why? Because railroad employees have to know the sizes and types of the cars – information Umler tracks – to determine if what they’re shipping will fit into the cars.

Car sizes also are important because some are too big to fit through smaller railroad tunnels. Trying to send the wrong car through such a tunnel could lead to a disaster.

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